Biographical Data :

Name :

Hanif Muhammad

Period :

1934 - 2016

Biographical detail :

A Pakistani cricket star who played the longest innings in Test history.

Hanif Muhammad was a builder of monumental innings, both in terms of number of runs he scored and the time he spent at the crease. For more than three decades he held the record for the highest individual score in first class cricket – 499 – and still standing in his record for the longest Test innings ever played, which lasted for a remarkable 16 hours and 10 minutes across four days.

His 499 came for Karachi against Bhawalpur in 1959. It was an achievement that stood unsurpassed for 35 years.

In 1958 Hanif had set his epic record for the longest innings in Test history when he scored 337 in 970 minutes against West Indies in Barbados.

Such feats made Hanif Muhammad the first star of Pakistan cricket and a leading figure in his home nation, where he did as much as anyone to inspire wide participation in a sport that had once been the preserve of a small sub-continental elite.

At the age of 17, Hanif had already made his international debut in Pakistan’s first Test match against India in 1952.

He played 55 Tests between 1952 and 1969, scoring 3,915 runs at an average of 43.98 and captaining the side between 1964 and 1967.

For two decades Hanif was also editor of the Cricketer magazine in Pakistan, which he had helped to set up in 1972.

Hanif Muhammad was born into a sporting family in Junagadh in Gujurat state in India. He migrated to Pakistan with his family at the age of 13.